Centre for European CEPS Working Document Policy No. 223/July 2005 Studies The Reluctant Debutante The European Union as Promoter of Democracy in its Neighbourhood Michael Emerson, Senem Aydın, Gergana Noutcheva, Nathalie Tocci, Marius Vahl and Richard Youngs Abstract In its discourse the EU places democracy and the rule of law as number one. This paper examines the extent to which the EU is a coherent actor in pursuing this goal in practice, especially in its wider neighbourhood. Case studies are presented, covering much of the neighbourhood: Balkans, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine, Maghreb and Israel-Palestine. The distinction is made between the enlargement- related sphere, which is an extension of EU internal policies and the foreign policy sphere beyond. In the enlargement process, the EU has worked powerfully as a promoter of democracy both through its gravitational attraction and explicit political conditionality. In the foreign policy sphere, a whole set of institutional and historical inhibitions and partly conflicting priorities muffle the outcome for democracy promotion. However, these two spheres, the internal and external, are in practice overlapping. The EU’s official neighbourhood policy, which sets democratisation as the number one priority, is subject to ambiguous interpretations, between the EU that claims it is a foreign policy, whereas various partner states view it as a pre-accession strategy. Recent developments see new dynamics. On the one hand, the Constitutional ratification crisis will shatter some pre-accession illusions, yet on the other, this may drive the EU to give greater substance to its neighbourhood policy in order to mitigate discouragement. inking ahead for Europe Moreover, in the neighbouring regions from former Soviet Union states to the north and the Arab world h to the south, there develops a fresh momentum to the democratic transition, with apparent contagion of T ideas and revolutionary behaviour that is even reminiscent of some of the major historical episodes in the evolution of political liberalism on the European continent. Michael Emerson is at CEPS; Senem Aydın at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and CEPS; Gergana Noutcheva at the University of Pittsburgh and CEPS; Nathalie Tocci at the European University Institute, Florence; Marius Vahl at Leuven University and CEPS; and Richard Youngs at FRIDE, Madrid. This paper was prepared for presentation at the Conference on Democracy and the Rule of Law: American and European Strategies and Instruments, 20-21 June 2005, jointly organised by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), Stanford University. Support from the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Open Society Institute for the CEPS Stratagen programme is gratefully acknowledged. CEPS Working Documents are published to give an indication of the work within various research programmes at CEPS and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated. ISBN 92-9079-573-5 Available for free downloading from the CEPS website (http://www.ceps.be) © Copyright 2005, Emerson, Aydın, Noutcheva, Tocci, Vahl and Youngs Contents Executive Summary and Conclusions............................................................................................ i 1. Some paradigms and syndromes............................................................................................. 1 Historical perspectives............................................................................................................ 1 Institutional perspectives ........................................................................................................ 2 Europeanisation ...................................................................................................................... 4 Syndromes among the member states..................................................................................... 6 2. Case studies ............................................................................................................................ 7 Balkans ................................................................................................................................... 7 Turkey................................................................................................................................... 11 Russia and Ukraine............................................................................................................... 16 Maghreb................................................................................................................................ 20 Israel and Palestine ............................................................................................................... 24 3. Findings ................................................................................................................................ 28 Doctrine and discourse ......................................................................................................... 28 By category of partner state.................................................................................................. 29 Cleavage damage.................................................................................................................. 30 Institutions and decision-making rules ................................................................................. 32 Dysfunctional instruments.................................................................................................... 34 References................................................................................................................................... 36 THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE THE EUROPEAN UNION AS PROMOTER OF DEMOCRACY IN ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD CEPS WORKING DOCUMENT NO. 223/JULY 2005 MICHAEL EMERSON, SENEM AYDIN, GERGANA NOUTCHEVA, NATHALIE TOCCI, MARIUS VAHL AND RICHARD YOUNGS Executive Summary and Conclusions In less than a year, the name of the game seems to have changed. A year ago, as the EU made its massive enlargement, the impression was one of a wider European area that divided neatly into three parts: first, the new EU member states and other candidate states that had become serious members of the democracy club; second, the European CIS states that had become entrenched as deeply corrupted phoney democracies; and third the Arab/Muslim states from the Mediterranean to Central Asia which for the most part were not even pretending to appear to be democracies. In the space of one year this landscape has begun to change, as some of the European CIS states resolved to clean up their phoney democracies, and the Arab/Muslim world is seeing either advances in the formal institutions of democracy or signs of popular uprisings against the incumbent authoritarian regimes. This leads to the idea that the European neighbourhood may now be witnessing a far wider movement of democratic revolution, with contagion on the scale of earlier historic episodes known by the dates 1789, 1848, 1917, 1945 and now 1989-[2005]. Yet what has been the role of the European Union in the current episode? Has it been a driving force for democracy promotion in its neighbourhood? It has been present, but often as a ‘reluctant debutante’, given the immature development of the EU as foreign policy actor. This paper was stimulated by an earlier paper,1 which dissected the inter-agency tensions and contradictions in Washington’s efforts to formulate a democratisation strategy. Institutional structures and roles are of course totally different in the EU, both between and within the EU institutions – European Commission, Council and Parliament – and between the member states. Yet there are similarities in that while democracy always comes top in the speeches, in practice it has to find a more modest place in a complex set of often competing and sometimes contradictory interests. This paper begins with a review of some paradigms and syndromes that seem to characterise the roles currently being played by the EU institutions and member states. This provides the setting for a series of case studies of current EU policies from Russia round Europe’s eastern and southern periphery to Morocco. In a final section we attempt to draw together general findings from this detailed material. 1 Mathew Spence, “Policy Coherence and Incoherence: The Domestic Politics of Democracy Promotion”, working paper, CDDRL, Stanford, 4-5 October 2004. | i ii | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Our conclusions are: 1. The EU has undoubtedly become important as a presence, integration model and democratic reference in the wider European neighbourhood. This flows from the fact that the EU is now an integrated space for almost 500 million people encompassing virtually the whole of Western and Central Europe, with high standards of democracy as the priority criterion for membership. At this level the EU does not need to try actively to shape its neighbourhood. It simply exists, and is an object of gravitational attraction for its neighbours.2 However when neighbouring states seek accession, then the EU sets democracy as the sine qua non test, and a hugely powerful political conditionality machine is deployed. The relative coherence with which EU actors have pursued political conditionality in the case of its would-be members follows from the